The Trump administration has persuaded the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its August decision ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the widely-used pesticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to neurodevelopmental harm in children and farm-worker illness. Essentially, this means again reviewing former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s March 2017 refusal to ban… Read more »

The Crop Profile database, created and maintained by the Canadian government’s Pest Management Center, offers high level production overviews for 38 different crops, now including peach and pear. You can download them for free from the Government of Canada Publications webpage or through the Crop profiles webpage.  

Tom Gallagher, Senior Resource Educator of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Albany County, received an Excellence in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Award from the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program (NYSIPM) at the Winter Green-Up Grazing Conference, in Latham NY. NYSIPM develops methods of sustainable pest management, and educates stakeholders and the public on how… Read more »

iPiPE is a set of online tools, information products and expert commentary for the detection and management of pests that threaten US crops. By enabling sharing about pest observations and other data, iPiPE builds local and regional capacity to manage crop pests, reducing unnecessary pesticide applications, enhancing farm profitability and contributing to national food security…. Read more »

Ag Pro reports that Tyson Foods is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to develop and employ strategies that promote ecologically sound growing practices while meeting the needs of the sustainable foods market. The partnership will initially target 500,000 acres of corn and aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water quality, and generate maximum… Read more »

Keith Eggleston, a Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC) climatologist, received an Excellence in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Award from the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program (NYSIPM) at the Empire State Producers’ Expo in Syracuse. NYSIPM develops methods of sustainable pest management, and educates stakeholders and the public on how to use these methods to… Read more »

As herbicide resistance and pesticide litigation issues in agribusiness intensify, electricity as a method of weed control is getting closer to becoming a widely available option for farmers. Grower Kevin Olson says, “Herbicide issues are unrecognizable from what we dealt with as farmers 40 years ago. There are no two ways about it—the Lasco kills… Read more »

The Sandy County Foundation is partnering with educators and students to build habitat for insect pollinators by offering $1,000 grants and plant materials for high school teachers in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Read more about this opportunity on the Sandy County Foundation website.

The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys, is an invasive pest introduced to North America in 1988 that damages fruit, vegetable, and nut crops. A January 10 article in Entomology Today discusses the work of researchers at Virginia Tech, the University of Georgia, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the USDA Agricultural Research… Read more »

A January 4 article on Agpro details how the Food Machinery Corporation (FMC) is developing an herbicide that contains both a new active ingredient and a new mode of action (meaning a functional change at the cell level of an organism exposed to a substance). This will give growers an advantage against weed pests, because… Read more »